\

See also: ∖ [U+2216 SET MINUS], 丶 [U+4E36 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-4E36], ₩ [U+20A9 WON SIGN], and ¥ [U+00A5 YEN SIGN]

\ U+005C, \ REVERSE SOLIDUS ← [ [U+005B] Basic Latin ] → [U+005D]

Character variations

﹨ U+FE68, ﹨ SMALL REVERSE SOLIDUS [unassigned: U+FE67] ← ﹦ [U+FE66] Small Form Variants ﹩ → [U+FE69]

＼ U+FF3C, ＼ FULLWIDTH REVERSE SOLIDUS ← ［ [U+FF3B] Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms ］ → [U+FF3D]

⧹ U+29F9, ⧹ BIG REVERSE SOLIDUS ← ⧸ [U+29F8] Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B ⧺ → [U+29FA]

🙽 U+1F67D, 🙽 VERY HEAVY REVERSE SOLIDUS ← 🙼 [U+1F67C] Ornamental Dingbats 🙾 → [U+1F67E]

Translingual

Alternative forms

• Users with Japanese or Korean settings on their computers may see that country's respective currency symbol instead. See Backslash on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Symbol

\ (English symbol name backslash)

1. (computing) A common prefix for escape characters.
2. (computing) A pathname component separator in some operating systems, predominantly Microsoft ones.

   Coordinate term: /

3. (regular expressions) Matches what the nth marked subexpression matched using parentheses: ( ).

   \7 matches the 7th subexpression

Usage notes

• Most operating systems use the slash ⟨/⟩ as a pathname component separator. This is by no means comprehensive however; PRIMOS and Multics for example used ⟨>⟩. Microsoft OSes, such as Windows and DOS, are the major ones which use backslash as the separator, for historical reasons.

Punctuation mark

\

1. (linguistics) delimiter for polyphonemic transcription.

Coordinate terms

• / / (encloses phonemic transcription)
• [ ] (encloses phonetic transcription)
• ⟨ ⟩ (encloses orthographic transcription)

See also

Punctuation

• apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ )
• curly brackets or braces (US) ( { } )
• square brackets or brackets (US) ( [ ] )
• colon ( : )
• comma ( , )
• dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― )
• ellipsis ( … )
• exclamation mark ( ! )
• fraction slash ( ⁄ )
• guillemets ( « » ) ( ‹ › )
• hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ )
• interpunct ( · )
• interrobang (rare) ( ‽ )
• brackets or parentheses (US, Canada) ( ( ) )
• full stop or period (US, Canada) ( . )
• question mark ( ? )
• quotation marks (formal) ( ‘ ’ ‚ ) ( “ ” „ )
• quotation marks (informal, computing) ( " ) ( ' )
• semicolon ( ; )
• slash or stroke (UK) ( / )
• space ( ] [ )

Further reading

• backslash on Wikipedia.Wikipedia